Brian E. Urquhart

Sir Brian Urquhart "was Under-Secretary-General, United Nations, from 1974 until 1986. He has led an extraordinary life, much of which has been spent in and around the United Nations system. Over a 40-year career, and since, he has served or advised every UN Secretary-General from the organisation's inception. Since 1946, Sir Brian's professional life has been, in many respects, a history of the UN itself...

"Born in England in 1919, Brian Urquhart was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. After fighting with the British army's airborne forces in North Africa, Sicily and Europe during the war, he became Personal Assistant to Gladwyn Jebb and Executive Secretary to the Preparatory Commission which set up the United Nations in London from 1945 to 1946. With his early experience on the ground in the Middle East and the Congo, and his twelve years as Under-Secretary-General, he is widely regarded as the pioneer of the modern concept of international peace-keeping. Urquhart holds ten honorary degrees from universities on both sides of the Atlantic, including Yale and Oxford, and has written widely on the UN system, including a much admired biography of Dag Hammarskjold."

In 1994 he was the scholar-in-residence in International Affairs at the Ford Foundation.


 * Former Director, International Peace Academy
 * Editorial Advisory Board, International Peacekeeping
 * International Advisory Board, International Peace Academy
 * Board of Overseers, Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University
 * Advisory Board for Washington DC Office, Search for Common Ground
 * International Associate, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
 * Winner of the 1984, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute: Four Freedoms Award
 * A Member of a group that Edward S. Herman refers to as The New Humanitarians
 * Trustee, Center for UN Reform Education